TRUMP DOUBLES DOWN: I'm calling it what it is 'a TRAVEL BAN'

Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who has battled President Donald Trump over the President's efforts to limit travel and immigration from some Muslim-majority countries, tweeted a "thanks" to Trump Monday.

In asking for the hearing before the court, Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said they are "confident that President Trump's executive order is well within his lawful authority to keep the nation safe and protect our communities from terrorism".

Press Secretary Sean Spicer was one of the most vehement defenders of the order, chastising the press for referring to it as a ban because the USA was still allowing people into the country, just not from the selected nations. "The courts are slow and political!" he said in a fourth.

Trump himself indicated late in the day that he had no intention of backing down from his early morning sentiments, tweeting, "That's right, we need a TRAVEL BAN for certain risky countries, not some politically correct term that won't help us protect our people!" "His lawyers try to justify it by saying it wasn't a travel ban, but it was extreme vetting".

U.S. Senator Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who opposes the ban, said on Monday Trump's tweets on the issue "clearly shows his intent" and his disdain for the judicial branch. Conway said the outcome at the high court "is what actually matters". "We like it when the president talks about our case", he said.

"We need to be smart, vigilant and tough".

To suggest, as he appears to, that his own Justice Department went rogue in pursuing a second executive order would be amusing if it weren't so frightening.

The administration said the travel ban was needed so it could evaluate existing screening protocols and set new ones. Justice Department lawyers have asked the Supreme Court to ignore Trump's past statements on the campaign trail, as well as his first executive order, arguing that the second travel ban should be considered narrowly on its own.

Trump is urging the Justice Department to seek a more hardline version. The initial travel ban was watered down after it was criticised as being a tool to victimise and segregate Muslims based on religion, something that goes against the United States constitution. After courts struck down an initial version, aides removed Iraq from the list and made other changes that Trump criticized during the Monday tweet storm. In court briefs, DOJ lawyers have said the orders are "religion-neutral" in operation, drawing "distinctions among countries based on national-security risks identified by Congress and the Executive Branch, not religion, and applies evenhandedly in the six designated countries". "One of the things police and all of us need to do is make sure we're as safe as we possibly can be".

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